Salvation: Into the Cosmos: Board Game Project Blending 4X and Eurogame Styles A Senior Project Presented To: the Faculty of the Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies Department California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies by Zachary Griffith June 2017 © Zachary Griffith 2017 Griffith 1 Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2 How to Play................................................................................................................................................... 3 Blending Eurogames and 4X ........................................................................................................................ 3 Eurogames ....................................................................................................................................... 3 4X Strategy ....................................................................................................................................... 4 Putting it All Together ...................................................................................................................... 4 Influences ..................................................................................................................................................... 4 The Game Design Process ............................................................................................................................ 7 Concept ............................................................................................................................................ 7 Prototyping ...................................................................................................................................... 8 Test, Analyze, Revise, Repeat .......................................................................................................... 9 How to Sell .................................................................................................................................................. 20 Marketing ....................................................................................................................................... 20 Construction/Manufacturing ......................................................................................................... 20 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 21 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................................ 23 Griffith 2 I. Introduction The year is 2217. Earth is overpopulated, highly polluted, running out of resources. Virtually all governmental structure across the globe has collapsed. Future for humanity on Earth appears non-existent; many predict Earth will no longer be habitable in fifteen years. Fortunately, scientists have discovered a way to travel faster than the speed of light, allowing humanity to take advantage of the dozens of potentially habitable worlds discovered by astronomers in recent years. However, this technology is expensive, costing more than the economic production of what little countries remain. Thus, the players, the few corporations wealthy enough to produce star-faring ships, have each individually decided to set off into space and each create an empire a set of colonies from which to exploit and control humanity forge a new home for the entire human race. However, like today, humanity has insatiable desires, and will only settle in the territory that meets the most of these needs, abandoning the rest. The people of Earth want abundant resources of all types, an industrial infrastructure to support their daily needs and wants, a wide breadth of planets to explore and settle, and a strong military to protect them from aliens (if they exist). Thus, the players must compete to build, or take, the territory that will make humanity the happiest. She who accomplishes this will have complete control of humanity and its future. Salvation: Into the Cosmos is a competitive colonization game. Players take control of Corporations that are tasked with creating a new home for humanity among the stars. Players will colonize uninhabited systems and use the natural resources in these systems to construct buildings for gathering or storing more resources, and ships to settle or conquer more systems. The player with the “best” collection of systems wins the game. Griffith 3 II. How to Play Each system produces a certain amount of each resource type, gathered by the owning player (if there is one). There are four resources that each colony can produce: Metals, Food, Exotic, and Labor. Players may trade resources with a centralized bank at any time at a set ratio. The corporation a player controls adjusts this ratio and provides a bonus to the corporation’s specified resource(s). Buildings allow a player to gain more of a resource on the colony they are built. Starships are a means of expanding territory that a player controls (Colony Ships) or blockading another player’s planet to slow progress (Warships). The game consists of six rounds. Each round consists of two phases: the Building Phase and the Actions Phase. During the building phase, players gather resources from colonies, buildings, and their Corporate bonus and then may use those resources to build buildings and/or ships. During the Actions phase, players may move their Colony Ships to take new colonies and their Warships to blockade other players or take colonies from aliens. After six rounds, the game stops. All stored resources, buildings, Warships, and Colonies are counted for each player and scored accordingly. III. Blending Eurogames and 4X A. Eurogames Salvation: Into the Cosmos would, categorically, fall into the Eurogame genre. Eurogames are named such as many originate from Europe, mainly Germany. Specifically, many are winners of the Spiel des Jahres, a major German award for board games. Narratively, they are mainly non-violent and feature peaceful competition. In terms of gameplay, Eurogames are characterized by having simple rules, complex strategic decision-making (Chabris), Griffith 4 “information-rich environment[s],” and little, if any, chance-based mechanics (Hendrickson, 20). Eurogames reward players who make the better decisions (Chang, 17). B. 4X Strategy Salvation would also fall under the category of the 4X genre of games. Coined by Alan Emrich in a preview of Master of Orion in Computer Gaming World in the September 1993 issue, 4X is a type of strategy game in which players “eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate.” In other words, players start out as a small city, settlement, or empire, venture into the world around them, grow their territory, gather the natural resources of their surroundings, and fight other players in a bid to become the largest and most powerful empire (Emrich, 92). A common example of this genre is the Civilization series of videogames (Habib). C. Putting it All Together Salvation: Into the Cosmos is a blend of the “Eurogame” and 4X traditions. It is a competitive colonization game with simple rules and multiple paths to winning, promoting planning and decision making. It follows the Eurogame tradition of being able to win without violence (Hendrickson, 20), as players can gain enough points from resources, colonies, and structures to outmatch points gained from building Warships. However, due to the nature of starting small, growing outward, and competing with other players to get bigger, this game is also naturally a 4X style of game. IV. Influences The primary influence for this game is Settlers of Catan. Set in a fictional version of the Medieval period, players represent settlements on a newly discovered resource rich island of Catan. Each settlement uses the natural resources on Catan to expand its infrastructure. However, Griffith 5 the island is not large enough to support the expansion of every settlement, and thus the settlements are in a race to grow the largest fastest. Created by Klaus Teuber, Settlers of Catan is a famous game in which players compete for resources and infrastructure on an island. It is considered the first game of the so-called “Eurogame” genre. Each turn, two dice are rolled and compared with the numbers on the tiles. Players with settlements adjacent to each tile with a number matching the total die roll collects those tiles’ corresponding resource (Chaslot et al., 22-23). Players can then use those resources to build infrastructure and/or trade with other players (Siders). At the end of the game, players get points for infrastructure and bonuses for certain feats (Pfeiffer, 3). First, Settlers of Catan has a simple design that allows for complex gameplay. While Salvation: Into the Cosmos does not have the same rules as Settlers of Catan, it attempts to capture the spirit of the design (simple rules and layout, but complex gameplay). Next, Settlers has a hex tile layout that is randomized each game to ensure that each game is a unique experience for the players. To create a similar effect, Salvation: Into the Cosmos has a similar mechanic, the main difference being that each player starts on a colony that is designed to make initial expansion easier. Finally,